Anyone notice strange announcements for 174.128.31.0/24

Tue Jan 13 18:18:13 UTC 2009

Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> Filtering and other manipulation happened on your router, prepending my 
> ASN is putting that information into every router.  That seems to be a 
> serious qualitative difference to me.  Do you disagree?
> 

I think the basic disagreement is whether you think that "your stuff" is 
"select from internet where ASN is mine AND IP_ADDRESS is mine" or your 
stuff is "select from internet where ASN is mine OR IP_ADDRESS is mine".

The person conducting the experiment clearly thought it was ok to use 
"your ASN" as long as it was "his address" that was being announced, 
since as long as it is "his address" he's allowed to put whatever he 
wants in the AS PATH he announces to the world for it. ("I can list 
whatever I want as my age, it is my profile after all")

Others clearly think it is not ok to use "their ASN" with *any* address, 
and that even though it is "his address" he is only allowed to put 
numbers in the AS PATH that he has permission to put there. ("The terms 
of service say you must state your actual age in your profile so that 
state laws about what minors can/can't do/see can be complied with")

And of course nobody cares about the *other* integers that are involved 
in announcements, just the 32-bit ones that represent IP addresses and 
the 16- and 32-bit ones that represent ASNs. People who don't understand 
(like jurors) would probably be confused and/or think we're all crazy 
for arguing about this stuff.

Matthew Kaufman